


at the throat

by chartreuser



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Friends With Benefits, M/M, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 01:34:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10889043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: They've gone this long without clarification.





	at the throat

**Author's Note:**

> thank you and much love to becky for everything in the world <3
> 
> warnings: d/s themes and painplay

In the living room, where Alex has taken to sprawling out on the sofa ungainly, broad, taking up all the space in the world Nicky presses the glass of iced water he’d poured to the side of his neck.

“Fucking hell,” Alex curses, but to his credit, he doesn’t flinch. “You’re awake too early, Backy.” 

Nicky moves to sit down beside him, his feet up on the coffee table as he settles beside Alex. “You’re up earlier than me,” he points out. 

Alex’s hand falls on his thigh, absentmindedly. “Couldn’t sleep.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Nicky repeats. He moves to put his half-empty glass beside Alex’s feet. “Alex.”

“It’s nothing,” Alex says. 

“Nothing isn’t very descriptive.” 

“It’s nothing,” Alex says again, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. He’s looking at Nicky when he pulls away, his gaze darkening when he sees the hickey at the base of Nicky’s neck. Nicky doesn’t say anything about it. Who knows if Alex had meant to put it there? Alex is the kind of person that means to appear exactly as he is: too-cheerful, not nearly serious enough—if he’d wanted to plant an obvious hickey on his teammate-with-benefits, he wouldn’t let you know why. 

Nicky wraps his hand around the skin of Alex’s wrist, just a little tightly.

“Not healthy of you to worry so much, Backy,” Alex just says, his voice low enough that Nicky’s straining to hear him, but enough to settle the conversation. “If it’s anything bad, I’ll let you know.”

“Good,” Nicky says. He isn’t in the business of pushing Alex to say what he doesn’t want to. He stands up to leave, Alex still reclined on the leather, the space beside him conspicuously empty. He doesn’t think too much about that. “I’ll see you during practice, yes?” 

“Yeah,” Alex says, his eyes vaguely resting on Nicky’s almost naked form. He’s similarly undressed, his necklace resting on his chest, and again, he doesn’t move when Nicky reaches over to rub his fingers over the pendants. Alex gathers his clothes from the bedroom, later, where he’d left them, and leaves through the back door.

 

 

 

Like all bad habits, Nicky’d neglected to pay attention when this relationship with Alex was forming—the fucking around, the secrecy; the resolve not to care, just so they didn’t have to talk about it—and exactly like a bad habit, it’s persistent: Alex will always answer his phone; Nicky would always ask for company; Alex will always show up with an expensive bottle of wine. 

“You ever get tired of me?” Alex had asked, hungover on Nicky’s couch, like Nicky would even spend that much time around him if he didn’t want to. 

Nicky had leaned over and kissed him soundly. “When you do stupid things like climb onto the rooftop at three in the morning,” he’d said, “But no.” 

“But you followed me onto that rooftop,” Alex had said. 

Nicky had pinched his side. “And then I led you down.” 

That was the sting of exiting of the playoffs—familiar by now, an old ache; but when they were younger, they dealt with it differently, with a lot less grace. But now they’ve learnt better. It’s turned into something they already knew how to combat; and if they didn’t know how, they were never the only ones. Year after year of falling short, empty glasses crowded in Alex’s living room. They drank then, and they’re still drinking now—you’d think they didn’t understand that alcohol wasn’t a solution. But they did: Alex especially, Alex more than anyone.  

“Drinking is a good solution to many things,” Alex says, eight glasses on the table and none of them his. “Unhealthy, sure, but you deal with that the next morning. So drink. Drink more.” 

Andre and Tom are furrowing their eyebrows rightfully at Alex’s words, the poor lads; they haven’t grown out of the habit of believing everything Alex says when he wants them to.

“Don’t believe him,” Nicky chimes in. “He says that, because it’s easier to handle all of you crowded in this house when you’re hungover.” 

Alex gets socks thrown at him for his trouble—Kuzy is joining in, despite really not being part of the conversation at all: he probably saw the commotion and decided to jump in on the action. Andre’s leaning on Whip and trying to finish his shot; and they’re shouting vaguely about video games, Carly and TJ and Mojo mangling some pop song, Nicky is too old for this shit.

“You’re barely old enough to say that,” says Alex, when Nicky falls in step beside him to the kitchen. He stops for a moment, to rein Nicky in by his neck and smack a kiss onto his cheek.

Nicky kisses him, for real. “I have an old soul, or whatever,” he says, but he knows that he’s smiling. “You, on the other hand, just look old.” 

“Cheers,” Alex says. 

“You know,” Nicky says, raising his eyebrows at his hair. 

Alex looks even more affronted, if that were even possible. “I look _distinguished_ ,” he says. 

“Is that why you’re not drinking?” Nicky asks. “Are you too _distinguished_ for vodka?” 

“Maybe,” Alex says, and winks. But there’s a rigidness to his posture that Nicky’s words hadn’t put there. Nicky’s face sets a little, because prying any sort of truth out of Alex always needs a little sternness. “No. I’m going to drink later, when the kids are a little more tired.” 

“You know,” Nicky says, resting his hip against the counter as Alex pries more alcohol out of his out-of-control liquor cabinet. “They’re not actually our kids.” 

Vodka, vodka, more vodka. Superficially, all Alex does is fulfil Russian stereotypes, and Nicky thinks he spends more time with the upkeep than not, but he’s gleeful for it, so what can Nicky say? 

“I know,” says Alex, when his hands are full of alcohol again. He unloads a few of the bottles onto Nicky. “I know, but sometimes I want to mope by myself. You can be there, if you want.” 

“I’m always there,” Nicky says. “You know I am.” 

Alex blinks at him, stepping over Lars to deposit his stash of alcohol on the table. “I know,” he says, again. “I know.” 

 

Alexander Ovechkin has a lot people know about him—or at least, they know the narrative he’s written into. The media wanted to write about him, so they did; the media didn’t want to write about Nicky, so they didn’t. Ovi as the face of the Capitals; Ovi as the face of the league—he gets tired of it, but the NHL will try their best to deny that; _Alex Ovechkin was made for the spotlight, and he likes it,_ they say. _Anyone who came to the NHL should._

“It’s funny,” Nicky says, when questioned by Andre one day, when he first joined the team. “When you come so far, a lot of the times, you just want to play hockey. That’s all you want.” Putting it like that is simple, of course, like a pipe dream come true, _just a lot of fucking practice_ , when in reality it probably wasn’t just that. But it’s the NHL’s narrative they’re playing by, it’s their fucking rules, and Nicky wants out of all that, but a lot of things you just couldn’t run out on,it’s not easy; they just want you to think it is. 

“So cynical,” Alex said, when Andre had squirrelled off to god knows what with Willy and Latts. 

“So cynical, my ass,” said Nicky, looking up at Alex from his stall, watching his backlit smile, the one that told you how long Alex had to fend off questions about meaningless shit, “You’re more cynical than I am.” 

“I’m not cynical, Backy,” Alex tries to argue, his lips tilted in a lazy quirk, his actual sincere smile, his weight all balanced on one foot, their legs touching as Alex crowds him in. Like this, no one else can see Nicky, not with Alex with his ungloved hand at his jaw; like this, no one can see Alex, or the little sigh that runs through him, slow, but barely steady. 

 

The first time, Alex had shown up at Nicky’s with takeout, dressed in the ugliest combination of shirt and sweatpants ever known to man. 

Nicky could say he had no idea why he’d slept with him because of that, but that was a lie; you had to peel the layers off of Ovi before you got to have any part of him. You had to talk him out of them, as if he were a stubborn child, and then you had to hoard those layers like a secret. Nicky doesn’t think he’s hoarding Alex, or at least, Alex hasn’t been giving him anything to hoard, other than what Nicky has already known as a teammate. 

So when Alex shows up in his literal fucking pyjamas, all Nicky can do is let him in, and then try to laser his clothes off with the power of his glare.

“You could at least try and put in more effort,” Nicky says. “I’m worth some fucking effort, right?”

“But you’d be taking my clothes off anyway,” says Alex.

“The sentiment is what matters here, Ovi,” Nicky says. “The sentiment.” 

Alex stares at him balefully.

Nicky rolls his eyes, and goes to straddle him instead, running his thumb across Alex’s bottom lip. Alex is staring up at him calmly, the little smile at the corner of his lips. It makes Nicky want to kiss him. It’d be so easy. It’s not as if they’ve never kissed before—they do it all the time. But it never means anything, which is where Nicky’s faults lie. He always wants it to mean something. 

“I’ve never felt so easy,” says Nicky, idle. 

“You’re not easy,” Alex says, his hands coming up to rest on Nicky’s waist, leaning into him. Nicky runs his fingers through Alex’s hair, almost digging them into his scalp. “If there’s a wrong word for you, Backy, it’s easy.” 

“I’m wondering if I should take offence to that.”

Alex hums into his chest, his head turning. “It’s not an insult,” he points out, pulling away to start unbuttoning Nicky’s shirt, fingers lingering. “You deserve to be difficult.”

Nicky doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Sometimes,” Alex says. “I forget, you know? That it’s not just what happens on the ice.”

“Ovi,” Nicky says.

Alex sets his jaw—Nicky can see him clearly, the way he clenches his jaw too hard—but the rest of him is lax, his body slumping into Nicky like he was enough to hold him up. Alex is always more human the first few hours he comes awake, quieter, softer around his eyes. It’s a weird word to describe Alex with, _soft_ , but it comes, occasionally—especially here, in his worn-down pyjamas, under Nicky’s hands.

“Like we have this, and it’s not just three periods, and then overtime, and then maybe a shoot out.”

Nicky lets out a laugh. “Not everything is about a hockey game, yeah.”

“I know,” Alex says, but he’s looking away from him again, eyes trained on Nicky’s bare stomach. “I know, but sometimes I forget.” 

“We all do,” Nicky says, pushing Alex’s chin up with his knuckles, to wait for Alex to look him in the eyes. Alex hasn’t shaved in a while—his stubble is rough, scratchy against his palm. “It happens, though. Sometimes.

“Sometimes,” Alex echoes, when their eyes meet.

 

A regular season goes on for a long time. Alex doesn’t come home with him every night, or every other night: they spend less time around each other when the team is doing good, and Nicky—

Nicky can’t hate that. He doesn’t have the grounds to. 

Alex skates up to him during practice, once TJ has skated off to find Beagle to bother. “Everything between us,” he says, “It doesn’t affect the team, yeah?” 

Nicky nearly freezes, then, faced with such a question. “Why would it?”

Alex shrugs. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened,” he says. He’s watching Nicky, lips pressed into one line. “I don’t always know how to fix things.

“There’s nothing that would need fixing,” Nicky says. 

Alex grasps his elbow lightly—Nicky has to fight back the instinctive response to lean in closer to him. 

“Are you sure?” Alex asks. 

“We’ve never been in a situation where it needed fixing,” Nicky says. It’s true, because Nicky hadn’t allowed it. If there was one singular lesson Nicky had learnt from Alex, it was to never take things too far. “Why would we start now?” 

The breath goes out of Alex, then. “You’re right,” he says. 

When practice is over, Nicky invites himself over to Alex’s house. Gets in his car to follow him home, and when he pushes past the door to meet Alex in the kitchen, Alex lets him shed his jacket and keys onto the counter without question. 

“We’ve always been careful with each other,” Nicky tells him, closing in on Alex’s space, refusing to let Alex back away. “We won’t fuck up.” 

But that’s always been easy to say. _We won’t let it get too far,_ Nicky had promised once, like he’s never fallen in love when he wasn’t supposed to, like you could wash this away with time and everything would become the more diluted for it. And things have become watered down—the enthusiasm, the acceptance of this responsibility, the simple idea that it wasn’t that easy to push for something you wanted, that sometimes your wants just fall out of your hands, or will never come to you for the taking at all, and it’s easy to say, _see you at practice, Alex,_ sitting quietly in that bedroom of his, naked, watching him finish the glass of water to set it down on the table. Alex has always been out of reach.

“I’m not worried about the team,” Alex says finally, with all of his intensity, the one that Nicky anticipates each time, but is still shocked by, though he shouldn’t—not taking Alex seriously is a rookie mistake, and one Nicky should have grown out of by now, on all accounts. “I’m worried about us.” 

“Us,” Nicky echoes. He tries not to let that overtake him in fear, because that’s stupid, this arrangement he has with Alex has lasted longer than some of the children have been on the team. 

Alex takes a deep breath—Nicky can feel it, with his hand curled around Alex’s waist, the subtle shifts in his stance; Nicky has seen it all before, the little movements in his expression when he settles into a discussion. 

“I don’t want to have this discussion,” he says. 

“Nicky,” says Alex, pleadingly. “You don’t think something’s changed?” 

Nicky sighs. “There’s always been something between us,” he evades, darting in to kiss him chastely, a quick press of their lips. “What are you talking about?” 

“I’m talking about us,” says Alex. He’s solemn, now, and a little exasperated, maybe, that Nicky doesn’t get what he’s saying. But Nicky does—of course he does. “Me and you. Not about hockey,” he continues, and then he reaches for Nicky’s hands. “About us.” 

“Us,” says Nicky, “As in, the fucking that we do.” 

Alex shrugs. “Right.” 

“You want to talk about it now,” Nicky says. “I don’t know why you want to talk about it now.” 

Alex draws back, his gaze narrowed slightly in confusion. “Why are you mad?”

“I’m not mad,” Nicky says. He’s scared. Those are two different things, but the appearance of anger has always been preferable to fear, if you asked Nicky. “It’s just—”

“Just?” Alex asks, and he really does look like he has no idea. 

“Nothing,” Nicky says. 

“Are you sure?” Alex asks, worried now. His thumbs are rubbing circles onto the backs of Nicky’s hands. “I just wanted to say…” His voice trails off. 

“Say what,” Nicky prompts.

Alex shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, a strange mirror of Nicky seconds ago. “It’s not that important.” 

 

 

During team dinner, Alex sits next to Nicky, like he always does. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Alex proclaims, with a hand on Nicky’s knee. He’s a little rough-edged, like he’d prepared himself going into this. “If you don’t want to, then we don’t.” 

Andre, in the seat beside Nicky, looks over curiously, his leg bouncing. “Talk about what?”

“Nothing,” Nicky says, not missing the few seconds of Andre looking at the hand Alex has on his knee. He doesn’t say anything about it. “Eat your steak.” 

“He’s curious,” Alex whispers, and he still doesn’t move his hand away. 

Nicky sighs. “It’s not like they don’t know, Ovi,” he says. “They all do.” 

Alex taps the fingers on Nicky’s knee. “Not specifics.” 

“Yes,” Nicky agrees. “But they don’t _know_.” 

Alex says, “I mean. We don’t know the specifics either.” 

“I guess we don’t,” agrees Nicky, non-committal. Then: “I’m sorry.” 

Alex looks towards him. “Sorry for what?” Alex asks, and then he smiles. Nicky takes his hand off the table to squeeze it around Alex’s, ignoring the looks directed towards them by their teammates. It’s easy to slot their fingers like this—and stop talking, Nicky supposes. 

“For being difficult,” Nicky forces himself to say. “If you want to talk about it, we will. But not yet, I think.”

For the strangest moment, Nicky thinks about kissing him here—in public, where anyone could see. How easy it would have been to capture Alex’s attention in the simplest, least intrusive way. But that was a sort of privilege they couldn’t afford. Nicky knows that, too, along with all the underlying reasons why they shy away from holding onto each other for too long. It was the simple matter of being too rooted in each other’s lives to fully break into two, if anything—

“Come home with me tonight,” Nicky says instead, when Alex still hasn’t looked away. He can be the brashest person in the world, but this patience for Nicky—a patience that, Nicky knows, can be hard to come by at times—it never falters. All those years of screaming at each other, and it never did. Nicky doesn’t know if this is normal, or if there should have been something standing in their way, at least. It came too easy. 

 

 

“Do you think,” Nicky starts with, his back flush on Alex’s bed—and it’s a strange position to have a conversation in, lying down with Alex on top of him, head tilted as Nicky rubs his thumb along Alex’s jaw. “We took too long of a break?”

“Break?” Alex asks, biting into the side of Nicky’s neck, making his breath hitch. Nicky’s hands roam aimlessly at his back, before they settle at his sides. “Since what?”

“This,” Nicky clarifies, gasping a little louder when Alex shoves his thigh in between Nicky’s, and this way, he’s practically blanketing Nicky with his body. Alex is touching him everywhere, his fingers digging into his hips, his mouth coming back up to kiss him properly. Nicky hadn’t asked him home for this, exactly, but the words he’d thought up are increasingly disappearing, and Nicky would take what he can get. And if Nicky can get Alex Ovechkin stripping his shirt, kissing a line up his throat, he’s all the happier for it. “You know, since we last stopped fucking.” 

“Oh,” Alex says, and it nearly sounds like a purr. He pulls back a little, to look Nicky in the eyes. “Didn’t know you missed me.” 

Nicky tries his hardest not to look away. In a relationship where they’ve barked at each other on the bench, and have fucked too many times to count, somehow being honest has turned into one of the hardest things Nicky could ever hope to accomplish. “I did,” he says. “I do.” 

“Don’t have to miss me,” Alex says, and Nicky’s struck by how much he wants him, the instinctual slide of their bodies together. “I’m right here.” 

“So do something,” Nicky says. He digs his fingers into Alex’s sides, pulling him down so that Alex would kiss him a little further. “Please.” 

Alex groans. “Fuck, Backy,” he groans. “Shit.” 

“Yeah,” Nicky says, and he can feel his voice faltering, as Alex rolls his hips against Nicky’s, his hands coming down to unzip his trousers. “I wanted—I wanted you, but.” 

“But,” Alex prompts. 

“But it seems selfish,” says Nicky, and when Alex finally wraps a hand around his dick, he gasps. “Felt like I should let you go.” 

“Why?” Alex asks, and he’s rubbing at the head of Nicky’s dick, so slowly that it almost hurts. He’s watching him, the hard line of his mouth not unhappy—but like he’s content to wait here all day, with Nicky’s pulse climbing higher and almost desperate for any real friction beyond what Alex is willing to give him. “Backy.” 

“Well,” Nicky says, but then Alex has slid down the bed to take him in his mouth, his tongue running over his dick insistently, without pause. “I don’t—Ovi,” Nicky moans, his throat dry, the little hurt sounds dragged out of him as Alex sucks gently. Alex is holding his thighs down, his beard scratching faintly against Nicky’s skin, and it’s overwhelming, how much Nicklas wants him but is yet confined to have only what Alex wants to give. “Please, I—”

Alex hums around his dick. 

“I just,” Nicky tries again, but he can’t speak; he can’t even think. _I just want to be somebody you need_ —but there’s nothing else in his mind afterwards but pure want. He doesn’t know how to explain any of that like this, pinned to the bed, making little hitched noises as Alex’s mouth surrounds his dick in a filthy slide, “I just need—”

Alex pulls off. He’s inhaling slowly as he leans against Nicky’s skin, almost caressing, his hands firm where Nicky tests his strength. He can’t move an inch. 

“Ovi,” Nicky says, for the hundredth time, and it comes out like a whine, a little hoarse. “Please.” 

“I don’t even know what you’re asking for,” Alex tells him, his voice coming out raspy. “What do you want, baby?” 

Nicky shudders, feeling Alex’s hands on him tighten. “You,” he says. 

“You have me,” Alex says, staring at him with his mouth red and his eyes sharp, with all the intensity in the world—until he takes Nicky’s dick back into his mouth, slowly sinking down to the base. The noise is obscene. Nicky can only stare, rendered dumb at the sight and sound; Alex is already drooling a little, at the corner of his mouth. Nicky can feel his dick hitting the back of his throat. He gasps, head thrown back, hips snapping up on instinct—only to have Alex curl his palms around Nicky's hips and push down. Alex isn’t holding back his strength, using his weight to keep Nicky in place. 

His eyes meet Nicky’s—he holds them, as Nicky fights Alex’s grip, just a little, Alex’s fingertips pressing into his flesh. He knows he’ll be bruised come morning.

Alex pulls off his dick, chasing the pre-come with his tongue, just to torture Nicky, drawing a hiss out of him. He smiles at him after, this small, wicked thing that makes Nicky shiver. He doesn’t dare to look away. Alex is fitting his lips over the head of Nicky’s dick, to slide down, made smoother by Alex’s saliva from before. He doesn’t ease off, this time. It’s too much—Nicky feels like he can’t breathe, or at least he sounds it, his breath stuttering as he moans incrementally, and Alex keeps going. He doesn’t let up. Nicky can only try his best to keep still, fighting himself from cleaning up the spit by Alex’s mouth. 

Nicky’s eyes close. He can hear himself moaning, now, clearly, helpless and choking a little, like he’s the one that’s been sucking cock instead of Alex. But he opens his eyes in the end, just in time to see—to feel Alex swallow around Nicky’s dick, and then swallow again, his hands flexing over Nicky’s hips, still under Alex’s control, under his hands, and when Alex looks up, Nicky comes down his throat, his muscles locked, keening loudly in his throat, whimpering. 

Alex lets up just as slowly, sucking all the way, and he surges up to catch Nicky as he loses his balance, his forehead falling onto Alex’s shoulder as his whimpers peter out. “Good,” Alex says, like he’s been smoking, and Nicky’s burying his face into the crook of his neck when Alex wraps a hand back around his dick. 

“Oh,” Nicky gasps, his brain shorting out from the pain, from the overwhelming sensation of being touched again too roughly. “Oh, oh, Alex, please,” he says, sounding absolutely wrecked. “Should’ve—should’ve fucked me instead.” It’s too much, really, and too dry—it’s painful, even, sending tears to Nicky’s eyes, Alex’s fingers rubbing at the head of his dick, lightly, and then with too much pressure all at once. “A-Alex,” Nicky calls, but he doesn’t even know what he’s asking for. He doesn’t really know what he wants. 

“Yeah,” Alex responds, as calm as anything, and Nicky’s practically speaking into his skin, now, little mumbles that are really too incoherent for Alex to pick anything out of. “Talk.” 

Nicky gasps, his hips pushing up into Alex’s hand, into Alex’s thumb still rubbing at the head of his dick, slow. “I don’t—I don’t know, I—” 

“You thought you should let me go,” Alex says, and his other hand is coming up to rest on his hip, steadying him as Nicky shakes from the pain. He doesn’t know when he’s going to come—it feels like any moment, now, but the pain lights up Nicky’s spine, mixed in with pleasure, mixed in with the few barely-there drops of pre-come that doesn’t do much to help slick the way at all. Nicky doesn’t know if he wants it to stop, or if he wants it to hurt more, the way that Alex keeps him trembling and his mind blown out from the rough slide of Alex’s fingers, the way that Alex is barely stroking him. “You don’t want me?” Alex asks. “You don’t want this?” 

Nicky’s tongue feels like it’s been turned to stone, though he hasn’t managed to shut his mouth, moaning as Alex rubs at his dick a little harder. “I didn’t,” Nicky says. “I want it. I want you.” There are tears rolling down the sides of his face now, and he’s drooling a little, almost dizzy with arousal. 

“Then why,” Alex asks. 

“Please,” Nicky says, “Please, I didn’t—” 

Alex sighs, and starts jerking him off for real, then, finally easing the pressure off the head of his dick. “Then why didn’t you say so?” Alex asks, and he must feel Nicky’s tears, by now, dampening his neck, the base of his throat. “Nicky. You just have to tell me. You only had to tell me.” 

“I know,” Nicky says, almost choking on the words, breathless from crying and moaning. He feels damp all over, messy from tears and sweat and come, from the drool running at the corners of his mouth. “I’m s-sorry. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” Alex says, and oh, he’s speeding up, the friction nearly unbearable, making Nicky hiss out in pain-pleasure as he cries, his nerves in overdrive. “You thought you were selfish, that you didn’t think I wanted this too.” His thumb’s pressing against the slit of his dick, and Nicky thrashes a little, whining at the feeling. “But I do. I’m telling you now that I want you.”

Nicky jerks, and Alex hums softly, the hand on Nicky’s hip loosening as Nicky jerks in Alex’s lap, his mouth falling open in a litany of moans. “I’m sorry,” Nicky mumbles, his tears clumping his eyelashes, the pain bright enough that Nicky thinks he’s going to come, his dick twitching in Alex’s hand. “I love you,” Nicky says, finally, hiccupping a little from the pain, and Alex is making crooning noises at him, still rubbing him through his second orgasm, twitching as he spills himself into Alex’s hand. 

“I love you too,” Alex says. 

Nicky kisses him then, working through his trembling—Alex is almost gentle, a strange juxtaposition to how they were seconds before, but Nicky feels calmer, now, more settled, pliant as Alex arranges him onto his back. “You okay?” Alex asks, wiping an errant tear from his eye. 

“Yeah,” Nicky whispers. “I meant what I said.” 

“Good,” Alex says, and he goes to straddle him when Nicky urges at his thighs weakly, still boneless, until Alex is straddling his chest, jerking off with one hand as he wipes away the damp tears on Nicky’s face with the other. Nicky parts his mouth a little, languid, his eyes drooping a little when Alex comes on his face, some of his come landing on his lips. He’s aware that he’s a mess, that his whole body is marked by come and sweat, but it’s a good kind of feeling, Nicky thinks, watching Alex stumble off the bed to retrieve a washcloth, to fall asleep to. 

 

The first time, Ovechkin had showed up to his door, a plastic bag filled to the brim with paper boxes, and Nicklas had rolled his eyes but invited him in, ugly sweatpants and all. He’d slept with him, because nobody told Nicklas that he’d have stayed for so long; nobody told Nicklas that it’d just be him and Alex, at the end, that this ill-formed decision in his youth was the one thing he wouldn’t let go of. 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Ovechkin said the second time, a bottle of wine in his hand this time, and then the third time too, answering Nicky’s call in the dead of the night, his phone clutched in his hand—and Nicky loved that; loved that there was someone to want his company, in the very least, that it was Alex of all people. That he stood there with all of his well-established confidence missing from his eyes, waiting for some reassurance—that even Alexander Ovechkin had thought that there was even a chance of somebody not wanting him back then, at the top of the world.

“I would,” Nicky had told him at last, staring at Alex, standing half-naked as he answered the door, “I did,” and then they’d stopped talking about it at all. 

 

Nicky’s woken up in Alex’s bed before. He’s woken up here too many times, in retrospect, falling asleep with Alex curled around him, with all the caution in the world. And for all of Alex’s caution in the world—Nicky had never thought that he’d be the one for Alex to use it on, the little questions, the bottles of wine he keeps stashed for the team in his cabinet. You don’t think something’s changed, he’d asked, when something needed to. The takeout diners having already memorised their orders. 

“What are you thinking about?” Alex asks, curled towards him in the bed, this gigantic fucking mattress that Nicklas had never given thought to, how big it was for just Alex alone, the way he’d never asked this question before. 

“We need to talk,” Nicky says, before he kisses him. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this is actually an exercise in sucking at writing so @ those who r familiar with my work: i'm sorry to let u down but u made it this far so i love u <3


End file.
